Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbatt!ucbvax!ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU!fair From: fair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.os.eunice,news.software.b Subject: Re: Eunice can't deal with 5-part newsgroup names Message-ID: <18509@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> Date: Wed, 22-Apr-87 06:14:48 EST Article-I.D.: ucbvax.18509 Posted: Wed Apr 22 06:14:48 1987 Date-Received: Thu, 23-Apr-87 23:37:52 EST References: <1082@epimass.UUCP> Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: USENET Protocol Police, Western Gateway Division Lines: 29 Xref: utgpu comp.os.eunice:26 news.software.b:499 In the referenced article, Joe Buck writes: >If you're a Eunice user, and you keep your news in /usr/spool/news, >you can't have five-part newsgroups such as comp.sys.ibm.pc.digest >(do I see Erik Fair's work in that name?). You do NOT. I don't like that name any better than you do (at least not the "digest" part), but I have no alternative that would be acceptable to the USENET community. Concerning depth, I see no reason why we shouldn't go arbitrarily deep when it appears to be appropriate, and in the cited case, it is appropriate. One day, I hope that someone writes an interface that views the USENET name-space as a tree (which it is), and plays depth games of one sort or another. It would be an interesting change from the current paradigm, anyway... As for the problem, since this is a VMS limitation (and therefore unlikely to change soon), you should go to some type of mapping system. Messy, I know, but I don't think that we should allow the limitations of VMS systems to hinder the USENET, any more than I think that we should allow the limitations of, say, B news 2.9 sites to hinder USENET. I'm somewhat surprised that Eunice didn't encounter this problem and solve it already. Did Kashtan just work around it all over? Does MS/DOS have this problem too? If so, I'd be interested to know what Lauren Weinstein did in UULINK. And how about VM/CMS? There was something about this sort of problem in that ";login:" article about the netnews implementation for VM/CMS that Princeton did... Erik E. Fair ucbvax!fair fair@ucbarpa.berkeley.edu